After two hard fought games with many locos for me I was 2-0 up. Then I got a white screen in game 3, which was about halfway done when I left. We decided to replay. Ross then leveled the score with good games in 3&4. I missed a big opportunity in game 5 where I was in Ross's way and he had to take an ugly route. I should have played 6 blue, after which I will probably be too quick. So 2-3 behind and I became quite nervous. In 6th I miscounted longest and made a big mistake, but TTR god was undeservingly kind and gave me an extra ticket (Den-Pitt).

Very lucky in first game. They could have blocked Alautre in Atlanta.
Second game was a nightmare for Val with VAN-MON and WINNI-HOU.
Last game for the fun, as is mostly the case. With 3 dead tickets, no chance for us.

Update: 1-0 for me, Eva has computer issues so we have rescheduled the rest for Sunday 19:00 CET

Final update: 2-4

Two games Eva found multiple matching tickets, I had some locos with bad colors and eva had good colors. Last game Eva found 1 ticket out of a possible 1 total to win...Not much luck on my side....grats G7

Over the past week, there has been growing concern that the TAG match between AN2 and GP would not get played by deadline time of March 16. And as the other matches have played out, this match has become influential in deciding which team is the 4th team for the knock-out phase.

In speaking with the captains, they think they have worked out a solution to have the match either played in one of 2 time frames:
a. very early Sunday morning in Europe time zone, which would correspond to very late Saturday in USA west coast time zone. (That would be if GP can come up with a team willing to play at that hour.)

or b. a match could be played on Monday Night in USA time zone between two teams of players able to play at that time. (I recognize this means Tuesday 0:30 in CET)

As TD of the tournament, I again note my preference to settling such matters on the game board. So therefore it should be noted that an extension is granted in this special case. If this TAG match is not concluded by the time of option b, then I would be making a ruling on score of the match.

It can be done in one day.
One side will know, but of course, it seems that GANG is the one most effected since it is GANG's choice.
But if the time-line for line-ups has to move one day, then it moves one day. But I think the Current timeline can still work:
QF line-ups can be made to be due Wednesday and posted the same day. (original due date so nothing drastic is lost on the timeline, especially as far as playing timeframe.)

GANG_dea1 wrote on Sat, 15 March 2014 05:02

So what is the new timeline for the rest?

Or do you expect that
*) Captains of #1 teams pick their opponent
*) TD publishes the match ups
*) All teams hand in their lineups
all will work in a timeframe of less than 1 day?

We will decide our choice for both options beforehand and send it to the TD, so he can post it immediately after the last match.

The problem I see is, that this choice determines the other match ups so basically nobody but G7 and whoever they pick can prepare his lineup in advance (if he wants to have different lineups depending on opponent).
But probably I'm just too pessimistic here and it will all work well.

This score is arrived due to the following situation:
First, difficulty in scheduling.
Second, once a scheduled match was set up for 6:30 Eastern USA, vballman20 was not able to be present due to a problem of being caught in a traffic jam. Teams waited until 8:40pm, and vballman20 was still not freed to be home to play. So, decision made by TD to have the two teams play a match having AN2 use a bot. This would allow a second and third match to be played once vballman2o was present. In playing that first game, it was clear due to tickets that AN2 would lose that game.
Following that game that was stopped before full completion and waste of time, decision made to wait 1/2 hour for vballman to show.
After 40 minutes more, it was clear the match would not get played and Drake, captain of AN2 conceded the TAG match as a forfeit: 0-4 in favor of GP.

I've never gotten a thanks for having one of my teammate play at 6am on a Saturday to accomodate AN2, I hope there will be some kind of apologies to the AWT team.

Again, as a general remark, TAG is not the problem, crap communication is.
We are setting up rules to avoid that kind of problem, and some players would rather complain about TAG itself and time difference to justify their communication disabilities.

Reminder :
Safe exit
Once the schedule of Round Robin is released, if a team knows in advance that one of their players is not able to play in the time of a certain clash, they can ask for the TD's agreement to have that particular match played before the due time. It is the responsibility of the captain of that team to contact his/her peer to find an arrangement.

I do not really care personally as my team is not affected by any of this, but as a tournament organizer that really annoys me greatly.

I've never gotten a thanks for having one of my teammate play at 6am on a Saturday to accomodate AN2, I hope there will be some kind of apologies to the AWT team.

Again, as a general remark (not targetting a team in particular), TAG is not the problem, crap communication is.
We are setting up rules to avoid that kind of problem, and some players would rather complain about TAG itself and time difference to justify their communication disabilities.

Oh no, one of your team members had to play at 6am for a tournament ONCE!

I guess a few Americans are due 100's of thank yous for playing during lunch hours during the work week.

As for AWT, it is just unfortunate that the schedule didn't work out. GP switched to a weaker TAG team to make it work, we got a date set, but Vball got delayed by something beyond his control - traffic jam. There is no guarentee AN2 would have even won TAG anyway - given the results of our other matches.

This match could have happened, if there wasn't such a big stink over me adding my roommate to play TAG. After that, I decided not bother using that option. GFF did offer to allow me to play 2 of my accounts, but if I had done that, there would have been someone who complained about that.

And TAG is part of the problem, especially with the European attitude that playing at 6am on a saturday is a "favor" that apparently needs a thank you, and not something that should be a standard option when playing against USA players.

Let me say clearly here that as far as I am concerned, both AN2 and GP did what they were able to do in order to make this happen.

We maintained communication with the TD and with various permutations of our teams to find solutions.

In the end, there is no one to blame. It is just what happened. Vballman could not have known or prepared for being stuck on a highway for at least 2, if not 3 hours. If we should feel bad for anyone, it has to be him... that really stinks (glad I live in the country).

As far as safe exit is concerned. I am afraid I am one of the really bad captains who doesn't look ahead enough to determine if there are potential scheduling issues. Safe exit is a good idea. However, that assumes each captain is taking time to make a judgement that a problem might be coming. The only forward looking I did was to ask my team who was available when and then I worked out lineups for all five rounds during week 1.

For some reason, days go by too fast and it is already time for the next round. So, my apologies. I should have been aware that some diametrically opposed schedules were on the horizon for TAG and acted on it. Amazing how easy it is for me to see this now that it is over and the decisions I made were the wrong ones. In farming, we just till it all in and put in a cover crop....

Brad was sorry to menno in the lobby, GFF and Patterson were sorry to the TD and in the forum. And Drake blames the rules, Europeans and Sysyphus.

Drake knows beforehand he'll face trouble with scheduling because he knows the team he put together will have schedule problems, so he offers custom rules everybody has to accomodate with.
About American time zone stuff, Drake is just behaving like thekid. When you do not make yourself available during the weekends, yes, you have to accomodate. Period.

However, when Europeans do not communicate in due manners, they then make sure Drake has a point and they fuel that kind of BS.

And TAG is part of the problem, especially with the European attitude that playing at 6am on a saturday is a "favor" that apparently needs a thank you, and not something that should be a standard option when playing against USA players.

From my point of view a thank you is for everyone that do something for the good and fair playing of the championships, everywhere he/she lives.

Brad was sorry to menno in the lobby, GFF and Patterson were sorry to the TD and in the forum. And Drake blames the rules, Europeans and Sysyphus.

Drake knows beforehand he'll face trouble with scheduling because he knows the team he put together will have schedule problems, so he offers custom rules everybody has to accomodate with.
About American time zone stuff, Drake is just behaving like thekid. When you do not make yourself available during the weekends, yes, you have to accomodate. Period.

However, when Europeans do not communicate in due manners, they then make sure Drake has a point and they fuel that kind of BS.

You are damn right I am not sorry. I am the only one who will speak up, most of the other American players bend their schedule around and take it up the a## and be quiet, because they like the game, like the competition, and they have no other option.

I made myself available every day for TAG when I normally can't play on weekends. Most other teams didn't even bother to try to schedule the match till the following mid week, losing out on the first weekend to try to play. We were available each night to play, but oh no, I have to get on my kness and beg for the other team to play in their A.M. Screw that.

Sysy, you are involved in alot of the tournaments, just go ahead and say it so all this BS can be done with. Add a rule to every tournament that says "If you are an American player, you MUST be willing to play during your lunch time of your work week and if you can't you have to be able to play before 22:00 CET on the weekend, or you can't join". That is the reality, since Europeans playing early morning weekend is not an acceptable option as seen repeatedly by your responses. Also having Europeans stay up past Midnight during the week is out of the question most of the time. Sysy would rather blame me than come up with a real solution, and not something generic like "better communication".

So tell me when an American is supposed to play if they work 9-5 pst M-F, have family stuff on Sat. morning-afternoon, and church on sunday morning-afternoon. I would tell them they need to play before work or wake up early Sat or Sunday and play, BUT you don't think Europeans should have to wake up early, so I would assume you don't think Americans should have to wake up early either otherwise you are a hyprocrite. So when do they play?

As for AWT, don't blame AN2, we were available during various times on the weekend to play. I am guessing Patt/hogika didn't want to wake up at 6am on Sat. or Sun. to play, so that option was out. Everything from there was trying to make it work, and we did find a solution. I don't see how if we were still in contention it would have turned out any different. Alot of the scheduling stuff happened before we knew we were out of contention. So only thing different would have been, I probably would have asked for a day extension given the circumstances. And for the record, I sat around waiting for over 3 hours to play the match eventhough we were not in contention.

I normally offer all times on weekends (including night and early morning times) if I don't have other obligations - because I feel obliged to offer everything that is at all possibe, even if I don't like it (because I know that I cannot play my best game at 6 am).

I cannot offer that during the week, my job doesn't allow it.

I cannot offer to play at lunch time, because our maximum allowance for lunch is 30 minutes - that's standard in many countries/companies, if you can extend that you are very lucky.

So ... in general, if you play someone from a different time zone you have to be available on the weekend(s). If both players (or 4 players when it comes to TAG) have a job with strict working times that's all that will work.

It may be more awkward for Americans because more players are European, so they have to care about inconvenient schedules more often, that's true.
But (many) Europeans also have families, (many) Europeans also go to church on Sundays ...

Is it really not possible for East coast Americans to leave the office a little earlier one day or the other to offer a playing time at something like 11 pm CET (5 pm EST)?
Is it really not possible for West coast Americans to stay up a little longer on Friday to offer 9am CET (midnight Pacific) instead of 6 am?
Is it really not possible for Americans who have a family and go to church to offer anything on a weekend?

Fortunately most American players find possibilities among the above.
If others don't, but can offer European evenings because they can play at lunch time, that's also perfect - but then, why complain about it?

Some people bend over backwards to make things work, others don't.
Some people who always have or create scheduling problems are Americans, others are Europeans.
I don't see a time zone problem here, I see a problem of attitude.

So tell me when an American is supposed to play if they work 9-5 pst M-F, have family stuff on Sat. morning-afternoon, and church on sunday morning-afternoon. I would tell them they need to play before work or wake up early Sat or Sunday and play, BUT you don't think Europeans should have to wake up early, so I would assume you don't think Americans should have to wake up early either otherwise you are a hyprocrite. So when do they play?

I would assume they don't play if they're not available seven out of seven days.

As a European, I would not assume to play any tournaments if I'd join a board game community where 90% of the players were from the US West Coast and Australia and I would be unavailable in the the common time-frame seven out of seven days. I would also nog ask for rules nor start any absurd discussions but let common sense guide me to not enter such tournaments.

Moreover, in such a scenario, if I did have some availability, I would then not sign up with a group of other Europeans but I'd look to join a US or Australian team, knowing it would be hard enough to schedule my own games, let alone work something out with other players with challenged schedules. I would also take note of the fact that the idea of that tournament would be to play with players from other teams than your own nation.

So Sysy, 2013 didn't fit your argument so you went to 2012 and 2011. Great.

And I didn't say Europeans never play early, I said they had the attitude that it was a "favor" to do so. But maybe I should rephrase and say its the attitude of Sysy, Truck and a little bit of dea, and since you are the ones who post the most, and control the main tournaments, you perpetuate that attitude. Thank god Qorlas and Onyx are around to offset the tyranny a little.

And Truck - your comments are 100% useless and egotistical, and you can go suck it.

Since no one else has posted, I will just assume it is a few problem europeans that try to stir up trouble. "Let's blame Drake for a match not getting completed, let's blame Drake for trying to get a few more people to join Fusion, but not how 'we' want it, let's blame Drake that he ruined league because he dropped out before playing a match and had no effect at all on it." Get over it.

Thanks dea for your more diplomatic response. A few comments:

GANG_dea1 wrote on Tue, 18 March 2014 16:22

Is it really not possible for East coast Americans to leave the office a little earlier one day or the other to offer a playing time at something like 11 pm CET (5 pm EST)?

Sure its possible, but when the same is never expected of a European than I don't see why an American should have to leave work early.

Quote:

Is it really not possible for West coast Americans to stay up a little longer on Friday to offer 9am CET (midnight Pacific) instead of 6 am?

Sure, as long as if I offered 15:00 pst (24:00 CET) on friday or Saturday, Europeans would accept that.

Quote:

Is it really not possible for Americans who have a family and go to church to offer anything on a weekend?

Again yes, like I said they could offer early morning Saturday or Sunday, but if Europeans are not expected to play at that time, then its a little hypocritical. Adding in mountain and central time makes things even more problematic.

Quote:

Some people bend over backwards to make things work, others don't.

This is true, the problem is when it ends up not working out, it always seems like Americans are to blame whether outright or behind the scenes.

I ask myself why I put myself in the middle of this.
But, I will anyway.

I've said it before. I will say it again.

GP AND AN2 both did what we had to do to try and play the TAG match. No one, as far as I can tell, was purposely trying to be inflexible. This includes Drake and Vballman. There were simply realities of professional and family schedules that couldn't be changed for a game.

We finally got a match scheduled. Life intervened. Consequences were not ideal.

All four players were inconvenienced in one way or another. Each one of us made changes to our schedules to try to make it happen.

Each of you can make it about US or EU players, or about communication, or whatever you want, I suppose. But, there really isn't a reason to go looking for someone to blame on this one. Three of us waited for 3+ hours to play and the 4th was stuck in a car, wishing he was anywhere else.

But, I guess it is important that we enter the knockout round with some drama and some bad feeling. So, well done all.

I just wonder why the argument continues to be made about Americans and Europeans playing at the same time?? Until the earth starts rotating in the opposite direction, that argument is lost. Americans will always be behind timewise. Yes, it's frustrating that we have to accommodate scheduling most of the time, but what else can happen? Try setting up our own tourneys at night with no one? If I couldn't find a time to play during eu time during the week and especially, if i wasn't available on the weekends...I wouldn't play. How can I ask people to play during american time? That really doesn't make sense. Crying over same playing periods is an argument that thekid tried to force on everyone and look how well that turned out. Just isn't going to happen.

A big part of the issue here, is that Drake and Brad don't have similar schedules unless it's late American time. That seriously limits finding any time to play another team from the EU.

We can continue to talk about crap communication because some people don't understand that you need to send a pm for tag as soon as lineups are announced. That would reduce a lot of problems...